


Bedtime Stories

by storyinmypocket



Category: Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008)
Genre: Gen, Nathan fails at parenting forever, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-29
Updated: 2009-03-29
Packaged: 2018-01-08 21:22:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1137536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storyinmypocket/pseuds/storyinmypocket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eventually, Shilo learned to recognize the difference between her father's stories and the ones in books.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bedtime Stories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [allfireburns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/allfireburns/gifts).



When Shilo was young, Nathan tried to tell her bedtime stories. Like most fairy tales, they began with “once upon a time”, but that was where the similarities ended. His throat closed around the words that led to happy endings, and so the princesses were left sleeping or trapped, waiting.

Eventually, Shilo learned to recognize the difference between her father's stories and the ones in books, the ones that other girls (the ones who weren't sick, the ones who could go outside) were told, and, like any reasonably inquisitive child, she wanted to know why her father wasn't telling the stories “the right way”.

“Why doesn't she wake up, Dad? He _kissed_ her! Why doesn't she wake up?” Shilo would demand, bouncing on the bed with the perfect indignation of a child, tiny fists balled in his sweater.

“Because the world's not fair, Shi,” he'd tell her, holding her gently, willing her to calm down. She was sick, after all. She couldn't exert herself. “All the kisses in the world can't make someone better, or bring them back, no matter how much the prince might wish they would. Real people aren't like that.”

“Why not?” she asked. Again and again, “Why not?”

He could never bring himself to answer.

The stories all began with “once upon a time”, but “happily ever after” remained out of his reach. It was sealed away, like a princess in a glass coffin, pale and perfect, sleeping like one dead; like a maiden locked in a tower, with her distant view of a world she'd never touch...

Like a beast that hid from the world in a lonely castle, the man wearing a monster's form.

The beast had been a prince once, Nathan remembered.

Once upon a time, but not anymore.


End file.
